


Another Life

by Impala_Chick



Category: Smallville
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Lionel Luthor's A+ parenting, M/M, Shy Clark, Woke Up Married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 01:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15131852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impala_Chick/pseuds/Impala_Chick
Summary: The last thing Clark remembers is falling asleep in his own bed, prepared to take a precalculus final. But when Clark wakes up, he catches a glimpse of a life that just might be possible.





	Another Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KittyAugust (KittyAug)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyAug/gifts).



> For the Clexmas prompt: Clark wakes up ten years older and married to Lex, what happened?
> 
> This was posted to the collection but was never revealed, so I'm reposting in the hopes that my recipient still woud like to read it.

Clark smelled him first. The masculine scent of his urban cologne gently coaxed Clark awake, and he nearly laughed at himself as he rolled over. His dreams were so realistic these days -

Clark’s mouth dropped open in shock. Lex was laying right next to Clark in bed, a blanket pulled up over his shoulders. He was snoring softly. Clark reached out to touch, and felt Lex’s solid weight as his fingertips brushed his shoulder, and then scrambled to get away from Lex. The sheets tangled Clark’s legs together and he fell backwards out of the bed. He hit the floor with a heavy thud.

“Clark? Clark, are you okay?” Lex asked sleepily from the bed. Clark scrambled to get up from the floor, and looked down at his hand. A simple, thick silver band was wrapped around his left ring finger. 

Clark sat up, panicked. Was he trapped in someone else’s body? He frantically looked around the room for a mirror, but instead he found himself staring out of a huge glass window pane at an amazing view of Metropolis.

“Clark, honey. It’s 7 am on a Saturday. Please come back to bed.”

“Honey? What the hell?” Clark was incredulous. He kept scanning the room, looking for some sign that this was all a hoax. 

“What’s going on, Clark?” Lex sounded genuinely worried now and he climbed out of bed to walk towards Clark. Clark turned around to face him, and then quickly shielded his eyes. 

Apparently Lex slept completely nude. 

“Lex, cover yourself. Jeez.”

Just when Clark thought the situation couldn’t get any weirder, Lex started laughing. 

“Clark, we’ve been married for two years. You’ve seen me naked plenty of times,” Lex pointed out matter-of-factly, like Clark should know better. 

Okay, someone was definitely playing a trick on him. He pinched himself to see if he was dreaming.

He looked down, and found that he was only wearing his blue plaid boxers. At least those were familiar.

“Lex, where am I? What’s going on?” He looked up at him helplessly.

“I don’t understand.” Lex advanced towards Clark, and Clark tensed. He took a step back involuntarily, his hands up. He didn’t know if he could trust Lex. Lex halted his advance, but Lex’s face suddenly darkened, like he was genuinely afraid. 

“Clark, you have to talk to me. I don’t know what’s going on,” Lex pleaded. He was still reaching towards Clark, and Clark nearly gave in and embraced him. But what if Lex was to blame for the situation he was in? Last he remembered, he had gone to sleep in his bedroom upstairs at his parents house after studying all night for the precalculus final. 

“What day is it?” Clark had to start somewhere. 

“May 10, 2013,” Lex replied easily, “Our anniversary.” Lex crossed his arms over his chest, acting slightly self-conscious.

So he somehow traveled to the future?

Wait, they had an anniversary?

Clark sucked in a breath. 

“Our anniversary?”

“We made reservations at La petite fluer for tonight, remember? We were just going to stay in today and-” Lex stopped mid-sentence and gestured towards the bed. Clark looked over, catching Lex’s drift. Clark’s heart started to hammer in his chest and his hands felt clammy. He hadn’t actually _had_ sex before. Thinking about it was one thing, doing it was another. And here Lex was, talking about it casually, like they had done it before?

He looked down at the ring on his hand, and immediately his finger felt constrained, like the ring was constricting him. He wiggled it off.

“Prove it,” Clark said. 

“Prove what?” Lex’s voice rose, like he was starting to panic.

“The reservation. The date.”

Clark looked down at the ring, and turned it over in his palm. He felt the scrawling text etched on the inside, and turned the ring up to read the words.

_To my superman_

Clark felt his chest tighten and he looked up at Lex, dumbfounded.

But Lex had walked out of the room. Clark heard the door close, and then a few heartbeats later Lex walked back in. He was now wearing a thin purple robe, tied at the waist. Lex held up a copy of the Daily Planet, presumably today’s, that he had just retrieved from outside the door. 

Clark took the paper from Lex, and saw the date. May 10, 2013. Clark looked up to see Lex studying him, calculating whether this could all be a hoax. Clark didn’t blame him. Lex turned away when Clark made eye contact with him. 

He went over to his nightstand, and picked up a large black rectangular object. Then Lex started to type away until Clark could hear it ringing. Clark’s eyes went wide. It must be a cell phone.

“Hello? La petite fluer. Front desk,” a polite female voice said.

“Yes, I wanted to check on my reservation tonight at 6pm. For Mr. Luthor.” Lex kept his voice steady, even if his face still looked freaked out.

“Yes, Mr. Luthor. We have you down for two at 6pm,” the woman answered.

“Thank you.” Lex ended the call. He looked up at Clark, his eyebrows raised. 

Clark reminded himself to breath. He put the ring back on because he wasn’t sure what else to do with it. He walked over to the bed to sit down and try to get his bearings. Maybe he was just having a very realistic dream. Maybe he was having a kryptonite-fueled hallucination. 

Lex sat down next to him and hesitantly reached out to touch Clark’s leg, before he thought better of it and lowered his hand. 

“So, I guess this is all real?” Clark breathed out, trying to come to terms with his situation.

“I’ve been trying to tell you, Clark. You really don’t remember?” Lex looked at him with such concern that Clark felt guilty for putting Lex in this situation, even though he knew this couldn’t be his fault.

Clark reached over and squeezed Lex’s thigh in reassurance. The corners of Lex’s mouth turned up in a half-smile, and Clark smiled back. Lex took Clark’s smile as an invitation, and reached over and took Clark’s hand in his. 

Clark’s heart fluttered in his chest, and he squeezed Lex’s hand. He considered just staying there, in bed, with Lex. He considered savoring the life of this future Clark, this Clark who clearly had forged a wonderful life. But there was this nagging thought in the back of his head that it couldn’t be this _easy_.

He started to look around the room more closely, and saw that there was a large flat TV on the wall. Clark released Lex’s hand and got up to turn it on. He traced his hand along the bottom, searching for a button, and found one. The huge screen lit up a dark blue color, but nothing else happened.

The hair on the back of Clark’s neck stood up. 

“Weird, it worked yesterday,” Lex remarked.

“Don’t you think we should try lay low for a bit, see if your memories come back?” Lex stood up, beckoning for Clark to come back to bed.

“There’s something wrong,” Clark said as he headed for the kitchen, Lex trailing behind him.

He tried to switch on the microwave, turn on the stove, run the dishwasher. Nothing worked. Not even any lights would come on. The appliances looked shiny and new, like they had never been used. The refrigerator wasn’t even on, and it was totally empty.

Clark spun around to face Lex, angry. 

“What have you done, Lex? What is this?” Clark stepped up in Lex’s space, to stare him down. Clearly he must have hatched some scheme, done something to get Clark’s guard down. 

“Clark, I-” Lex started to say, his eyes down. He seemed lost, apologetic. Clark had been fooled by Lex before, but surely he wasn’t this great of a liar.

“Lex, this room is a set-up.” Clark brushed past him into the living room and started to run his hands over every surface, looking for bugs or cameras.

That’s when Clark noticed the blinking red light in the corner of the room, above the bed. 

“Lex, look!” Clark shouted as he stepped up on the bed and ripped the camera out of the wall. Lex came back into the room, his mouth agape. 

“Holy shit, Clark. What is -” Lex started to say, but then his body started to give off red sparks and his left arm started to twitch. Lex went very still, and then it seemed like his skin started to flake off.

“Alright, alright Clark. Bravo. You’ve figured it out.” A voice boomed from overhead, and Clark would have recognized that voice anywhere.

Lionel.

“You could have enjoyed my little domestic set-up for a bit, but now you are just going to have to sit in there, alone, until I’m ready for you,” Lionel sing-songed, taunting Clark. 

“You made a robot of your son?” Clark yelled at the ceiling. He started to feel as if the walls were closing in on him. He ran his hand through his hair, and his anger started to boil. It had all been a trick. 

“Much easier to handle than a real son,” Lionel quipped through the speakers.

Clark got down off the bed and made for the TV. He ripped that off the wall and tried to throw it through the window. It smashed against something solid, and the window flickered. It was fake, and Clark hadn’t even noticed.

“Now, now, Clark. You better get yourself under control or else your little crush is not going to have a very good time,” Lionel threatened. Clark clenched his fists in an effort to control himself, even though he felt like throwing Lionel against a wall. How had this happened? How was he going to escape? Who did Lionel kidnap besides him?

In retrospect, the answer seemed obvious. Lionel clearly knew too much about Clark, about his deepest secrets. 

Lex’s scream rang through the speakers. 

“Don’t hurt him!” Clark screamed. “I’ll stop, I promise!” 

“That’s a good boy, Kent. Now, you just wait here until I’m done.” Something made a clicking sound, and then the room was quiet. 

“Don’t hurt him,” Clark whispered meekly. He sat on the bed, his head in his hands. That’s when he remembered the ring. 

He looked down, relieved to see it was real. Real enough to still feel solid against his finger. Then, he looked over at robot Lex and saw that the ring was still on his robot hand. Clark got up and removed it from robot Lex’s finger before he put it in his pocket. Clark would say later that he just wanted proof that Lionel had created this whole future world just to try and hold him hostage. But in that moment, Clark just couldn’t bear leaving the rings behind. Even if it had all been fake, there had been the tiniest moment where Clark could have seen himself as this man, in Metropolis, married to Lex. The thought made Clark smile.

Clark gritted his teeth and solidified his resolve. If they made it out of this, he owed it to Lex to talk to him, to be just a touch more honest. Clark sure didn't need any more secrets between he and Lex. Worst case scenario, they could have a little laugh about the rings. Best case scenario... Clark could barely imagine it, for fear that nothing would ever change.

But hadn't everyone always told Clark he needed to write his own destiny? Just as soon as Clark smashed his way out of Lionel’s cell, that is.


End file.
